Slashdot Mirror
When Personalization Runs Amuck
pamar writes "According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, your TiVo could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your sexual preferences.
And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by TiVo usually try to "correct" the profiling by showing an abnormal interest in something wildly different." Yep, it's a dupe.
Are the editors out to lunch today? This is a duplicate from a day or two ago.
All repeats and no Firefly.
Need coffee again, Hemos? This was posted yesterday :P
another repeat in a single day?
this looks like the work of clay woolam
At least with TiVo, i don't have to sit through gay repeats...
Nuked.DUPE-Credits.taken.4x
No really, so? My TiVo goes a little against my normal interests from time to time in what it records for me in it's "suggestions" section. Doesn't bother me a bit. Doesn't take up any space really since those are the first programs that are deleted when space is needed for what I've told it to record.
come on you turkeys.
if TIVOs regularly record the same show twice from different sources.
kmem russian roulette: Aquillar> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM
Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/26/162622 5&mode=thread&tid=133
I really enjoyed this wasjr article. Great stuff.
Though, actually, I have to say I enjoyed it a bit more the FIRST time it got posted, which was only TWO days ago.
Don't you guys read the articles?
- target
Damn, it's Turkey Day! We love the news and all, but take some time off. Don't you know slashdot is primary reading for peeps at work?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/26/162622 5
All you have to do is go into the system setup menu and select "Reset Thumb Data".
It will forget everything it ever might have thought about you...
Mind you, expecting journalists to read the instruction manual before making wild statements is of course too much to ask...
It is like flashback thanksgiving around here! Here is the original, if you are interested... The orginial story was posted under "It's Funny...Laugh"
Different posters, different slant - now THAT'S funny!
definately a duplicate
What's up with you guys today? That's two double articles in one day. This exact same article was posted just the other day!
When Profiling Goes Wrong
I moderate Hemo -1 for posting a redundant article.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Hemos, try the following:
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=tivo
Its not that difficult to find dupes....
The old story is here, it was only two days ago.
wot no sig
The Wall Street Journal has been TROLLED.
WSJHL.
HAND.
DUPE
for the first year...its profiles were pretty on target, then the next year it started suggesting things in Mandarin (which I don't speak), and old B/W movies (which i don't like), and spanish news (which I speak, but don't care about)....
I have another Tivo that is only set to record Sacramento Kings NBA games, that one does a great job suggesting interesting NBA programs, Sportscenter, etc...
The Slashdot editors clearly are in the Thanksgiving spirit: Two duplicate stories today so far; one more, and we have a turkey!
But the question is, will they have a perfect 300?
Did I miss any special date, any happening, anything at all? ./ is repeating the stories too much! I know I've seen dupes before, but 4 in less than 3 days?
happy karma-whoring-giving everybody! we have to be tahnkful for ./ editors allowing us to krma whore on more than one article in a day! sweetness!
Sex - Find It
...now my TV is doing the same. At least the TiVo can't leave and take half my stuff! Hah!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
I tried RC3 and I WANT IT SO BADLY i give my face away to replace his ass!
I am forgetful, it keeps playing the same news clips from cnn every two or three days... (sound familiar?)
They have had to recycle three stories today.
This same article was already posted a few days ago.. Just letting you know!!!
the suggestions is part of the reason I bought the TiVo. And it's not like it goes out and overwrites what you told it to record. Whatever you tell it to do will always happen before what the TiVo thinks. What's nice is that if you have extra space and the TiVo isn't recording something then it might go out and look for re-runs or something similar.. It's not like you'll come home and everything you told it to record will be gone and in it's place will be a bunch of stuff you don't want.
Here. When are you gonna own up Hemos? its been at least half an hour now
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
It appears when your thumb info is incorrect on your tivo, it'll search out the WRONG face donor, and you'll get one you never really wanted.
Slashdot Editor spokeswoman Ellen Feiss said "It was a really good face... My tivo devoured it. Then I got a transplant and it wasn't as good".
Stay tuned tomorrow for more adventures of Punxatawny Phil, as ground hog day continues on Slashdot.
When Profiling Goes Wrong [/.]
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Oh brilliant, not 20 posts to this story, and 99% of em are "Hey its another one!". Made me laff. Keep up the good work slashdot editors!
Is there a setting in preferences to filter out duplicates?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Is there some way to personalise /. to avoid seeing duplicates? Now that would be useful.
For some reason, my SlashDot recording preferences are off. It keeps thinking I am really into TiVo articles.
Is this what happens when the editors get replaced by a TiVo?
The Pheonix Web Browser is planning a name change due to the fact that a trademark infringement exists with Pheonix Thechnologies.
/.'s front page too!
hey, i should try to get this on
Posted by Hemos on Thursday November 28, @02:25PM
Come on Hemos... Your breaking my balls.
Tournament Management Online &
...all over again.
It's Thanksgiving. Let's cut these guys a break. Sure, there have been two dupes today with one of them still on the front page.
As amazing as it seems there is a reason for this. Eating turkey can affect your cognitive skills. Not only does it make you sleepy, but it can make you miss things that you read.
I work for a rather large GIS software company, and one of our larger clients is responsible for most of the dead tree junkmail you get in your mailbox. How do they figure out that you would likely buy a Lexus/are looking to refinance your mortgage/want to join a health club?
simple... PRISM
put your zip code in there and see how accurately your spending/watching habits are reflected. Perhaps TiVo should ditch their "personal" profiling for regional profiling.
the most mysterious thing you'll see today
I order a porn movie for a friend.
TiVo starts recommending porn......
Girlfriend comes home to playboy channel........
I come home to redneck style vasectomy.......
(And just for shits and grins)
PROFIT!!!!
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
...um, all over again.
It keeps on thinking that we want to read the same article on gay pregnant TiVo users... :)
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Mmmm, I think this is the third dup today...
...,
Trying to think of something original to say...,
Nope, sorry, I failed.
Imagine for a moment a world without hypothetical situations...
I'll read slashdot for you, and make sure there are no story repeats. I ask only for $65,000 a year.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
(My tastes and moods vary so much I mostly get random stuff, so these are rarely useful to me.)
Slashdot seems to really think I like stories about Tivo... this is the second one the editors have recommended this week!
*thumbs down**thumbs down**thumbs down*
NO CARRIER
Slashdot editors are using a bot based on TiVo in order to run the stories its readers find most interesting. One feature of this bot is that it scans previously posted articles on Slashdot. Meanwhile TiVo users who have recorded Slashdot posts have returned to find their TiVo boxes "Slashdotted."
This article is next
Kisses karma bye-bye as he resubmits this article just to see what happens.....
What, me Tweet?
Here's my friend Run who probably knows better how to spell amok than the ./ editors.
We're getting an awful lot of stories hitting Ars Technica and then showing up on Slashdot days later.
/. just for cheap "I got a story posted!" thrills?
I really appreciate new and interesting stuff, but if it's already made its run through other blogs, does it really need someone to pick it up from there and rehash it on
News for Nerds, Repeats for Alzheimers
Trolling is a art,
Articles post repeat editors!
What if, in the future, companies start requesting the data collected by such "we can guess who and what you are" systems for demographic purposes?
"Well, according to this data, 25% of our customers are pregnant gay men, and 14% are neo-Nazis with an interest in cooking..."
But seriously. Something evil tells me that it's only a matter of time before this stuff is taken as the Word of Gord(TM)...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
With repetition like this, who needs Slashbacks?
Oh wait, thats how it was before I got the TIVO.
tivo doesnt behave like this at all. when it doesnt have a decision making seed it simply takes guesses at what you might want to watch. when a guess it made and you actually watch the programming it simple follows up on it.
if these people went through their 'tivo suggestions' and actually rated programming they wont have this effect at all.
also until tivo becomes 'multi-viewer' allowing for multiple people's suggestions a certain level of odd lookups are made.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Hey guys don't you realize what's happening? Since it's a holiday they're doing a "Best of /." show due to the lack of meaningful events on the turkey day. Hell, they probably have a script that just plops up a story from a list they have preselected while they're off stuffing their faces and taking naps while watching bad football (and that'd be 'mericun football NOT soccer for all you ferners).
Then why post it...?
I mean literally. If it's not something about yet another a small computer it's 3 days old news. Glad you are mainstream guys, didn't take long.
Do the /. Editors actually read the main page, on any sort of regular basis, or do they throw stories to the wind, and wait for us to flame the hell out of them?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
It is unfair of you to expect the slashdot editors to work more than 5 minutes a day for their living! Afterall, if they spent 5 seconds checking if each story were a duplicate, or even reading the front page from time to time, it might interrupt their beer and TiVo time!
====
Crudely Drawn Games
a lameness/repeat/rerun filter in them..looks like it's time to REVISE the slashcodethis time...except this time the editors should get something like this when they try to repost the article:
/.. You will have to wait 2 minutes to do that :)"
"Whoa there cowboy! Looks liek you are trying to repost URL that has already been posted on
No seriously slashcode should have something like a 3 day history underneath the post article that will check and tell the "reporters" if there are any similarities between text or if anu URLs have been previously used....
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
but you people who posted 50 criticisms of slashdot for repeating the same article aren't the brightest group Ive come accross. Not only are you repeating what the 49 people right before you said/posted, but you're not realizing that the dupe was a joke in response to the massive amount of irrelevant posts on that last repeated article.
;)
Oh yea and you moderators... nice touch marking posts as redundant
Look Slashdot, if you're going to post duplicates, and then edit them a few comments later to say "Yep, it's a dupe", why not just delete the article?
The discussion has happened and can continue to happen in the original article. A few people will know you fouled up - but who cares, this way everyone knows you fouled up by duping and aren't doing anything remotely editorial at all!
There's been a couple duplicates today, we must really be starved for news.
I think I'll submit a story...
"This just in, Chinese scientists, working feverishly for the past decade, have discovered a unique combination of chemicals that when combined with heat produce an explosion able to propel sharp metal objects down a tube at a high velocity. This 'Gun Powder,' as it's being dubbed, is set to revolutionize the battlefield. In other news, Springfling, the world's leading bow and arrow manufacturer, apparently worried about their stock prices, have dubbed the new invention blasphemous, unreliable and claim that it's unlikely to have any effect on the way empires carry out their wars."
-hero.
They're also discussing this over here.
how about a duplicate story category?
Then I could just select not have stories from the duplicate story section on my front page...
OR maybe slashdot doesn't work like that.....
M0571y H@rml355.
How can the poster himself say "yep, it's a dupe"? Why not just block the news in that case? Why admit so blatantly?
/. news posting... maybe the only thing the editor can do is add a comment but not delete the news? Just wondering...
However I don't know the intricacies of
The ENIAC Demo Competition
According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, your TiVo could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your sexual preferences. And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by TiVo usually try to "correct" the profiling by showing an abnormal interest in something wildly different."
Of course, and I highly suspect it, I may be talking out of my ass. -oqti
You guys need a head transplant.
Mind you, when people leave their desktops logged in at the office, I sometimes set their Google Language Prefernces to Klingon (ja'chuqmeH Usenet ghommeyvaD yInej 'ej yIlegh.) or "Elmer Fudd" (De web owganized by topic into categowies)
This is a duplicate from a day or two ago.
Deja vu is usually a glitch in The Matrix. It happens when they change something in the program. Be on your guard...
GMD
watch this
They could create a "Replay" section and whenever they feel like publishing the same story again they could put it there. This way they could even put it in the front page and nobody would have reason to complaim...
In the era of shortening attention spans, /. is secretely conspiring to either re-educate the masses if they succeed, or give the editors an easy life it they fail.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
That would help, but I don't think it would cure the problem. If the original story has a link to the register and the repost has a link to news.com, then it's not going to be kicked up. I'd exclude noise words in the summary, and do an automatic search on the rest, and display the top matches. A search on "Tivo" and "profiling" does display the two matches in this case, and so does "face" and "transplant" in the other example.
Slashdot thinks that I like TiVO news and keep posting dupes about TiVO news. :-)
Just kidding
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
... the TiVo software???
To this day on my credit report I'm married to Murray, along with a half dozen other major errors.
I never bothered to correct this because being married got me more favorable loan terms.
Now if these people can't get this basic information correct with forms that I directly fill in, how is Tivo going to get anything near correct when it's just guessing based on what I watch?
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
This has to be the worst couple of weeks for /. dupe posts I have EVER seen in all my years of visiting. What's up?
I was once a happy and energetic person. I used to love to be involved in life. Whether it was work or play, all my activities were fun and interesting.
Then I saw my first duplicate Slashdot article.
The effect was immediate. Life just lost that shine. I'm wandering around now, dazed and confused, exclaiming "Why! Why does Slashdot have to post duplicates!". My sex drive has vanished, my work productivity has become non-existant, my exuberance has all but dried up. All I can be fed up doing these days, is slothing around the house muttering curses against the evilness of duplicated news stories.
Please consider people like us, Mr. Slashdot editor, the next time you submit a story.
DeeK
Get a spell-checker.
Insert witty sig here.
If they finger your box and then call you gay?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
This could be a good idea to **cough*cough** force people into subscribing. If you subscribe you get to ignore all these dupes and all those redundant posts like "ummm yeah d000000d i reckon 'em pages r repeati'n 'emselves. Now me gotta go'n shoot sommat the preceedin' post was funny, not flamy :), and dooont ye forgit that
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
......are no substitute for human thought. If I buy a book for a friend off Amazon, that has nothing to do with my interests, my "profiler" won't be able to tell, but if I was to buy it from a bookstore from where I regularly buy stuff, the salesperson might realize that I am not that kind of guy or in the course of a casual conversation, I might tell her that.
Even though computers are supposed to be completely objective, one has to realize that real life isn't. That is the problem with AI. Intelligence isn't always objective, but AI almost always is.
Don't know what kind of tools are available to editors but...but why don't slashdot editors encorperate a bayesian duplicate submission detector in their "editing" process. Perhaps it would help them from spamming their own site?!?!?
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Second duplicate in a less than three hours from editors.
Why don't we do the same? Let us repost our comments from the original discussion and see if they get the same moderation.
Your karma could go up (or down) twice as fast! Or even faster if on second reading moderators get the joke you post!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Interesting how the users end up regulating their behavior. The experience of having their TiVo "validate" their masculinity (or whatever else is in doubt) must be very pleasurable.
I am a virus, put me in your
I wish I could convince my Tivo that I don't speak Spanish! About 1/3 of its "automatic" recordings are in Spanish. I have even tried taking the Spanish channels off of the 'Channels You Receive' list and it still seems to record from them.
I can see it now, /. starts automagically filtering comments based on those comments you've clicked on. Now all I can see is :
....
/. seems to have already implemented this ...
This is a dupe article
First Post!
Imagine a beowulf
Sony/M$ sux, OS rules
CmdrTaco can't spell
Oh wait,
Got problems with the shows TiVo records as suggestions? Well, try these methods to fix it:
Edit your "Channels You Receive" to remove channels you aren't interested in at all.
Look at the "TiVo Suggestions" for upcoming shows and rate them using the thumbs up/dowm method. Give three thumbs-down to major mistakes.
Take a moment to rate shows it has recorded before deleting them.
Rate your season passes. TiVo will automatically give anything you record 1 thumb-up. If you've got a season pass for something in a genre, or with actors, you'd typically dislike, rate the season pass with multiple thumbs-down (it'll still be recorded.) Do this as well for the one-off items you record (especially if your recording for guests.)
If all else fails, punch the reset button. Somewhere in setup you can tell TiVo to start over in building it's profile.
Obviously, these duplicate postings are happening for a reason. And that reason can't be gross incompetance. Our worthy Slashdot editors cannot be that dense, can they?
No! I've been to the lair of CowboyNeal, and I have seen the truth! And though, with shattered limb and bleeding organ, I return to you in pain, I return with the truth!
Hemos has perfected cloning!
There are now approximately a dozen of each Slashdot editor. By tomorrow, there will be a hundred of each.
Within two months, the United States of America will be overrun with CmdrTacos. Within a year, all of North America will be filled with JonKatzi.
Within five years, all life as we know it will have become Slashdot editors.
maybe there should be a general rule that comments like this is a dupe get no score even if they are funny (it hard to see such comments being interesting or insightful)
Posted by Hemos on Thursday November 28, @02:25PM
from the glitch-in-the-matrix dept.
someone writes "According to this article from the Slashdot Journal, your Slashdot could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your need to read a story more than once. And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by Slashdot usually try to "correct" the profiling by posting an abnormal number of flames and ironic remarks. Unfortunately, the only reaction from Slashdot is the remark: "Yep, it's a dupe".
This story will run again tomorrow, right after the one about the face transplants and before the new Linux kernel patch. Stay tuned
but it's "AMOK". Bloody Americans.
Can anyone tell me if there is any truth in this alledged profiling, or is this some kind of attempt to discredit the company and/or their product? Plenty of other organisation would like to see TiVo go away, wouldn't they?
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
Sorry, I used all my correct Grammar in the first running of this article.
It is an inverse Relation to the number of times an article is Run, and how much I care about the 'perfection' Of a post. Including yours.
This post, much like the one before it, is just satire to pass Time while I wait to eat. geez, I didnt even Spell the word right I was Pointing out that you spelled wrong :)
Do readers watch more closely than editors? There is a handy search box at the bottom of the screen, why not go ahead and search before you put up an article?
How about using a statistical approach similar to Bayesian filters to detect duplicate stories?
In the UK we have the data protection act. you have a legal right to ensure that any personal data kept about you is accurate, secure, and available to you (and only you) to see. I don't know how it works if the data isn't tied to a name though.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Don't delete the articles, just create a duplicates section.
Here's a few of suggestions for possible icons:
duplicates icon 1
duplicates icon 2
duplicates icon 3
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The worst thing is people complaining about people pointing out repeatedly that this story is a dupe.
I am certainly not going to, but I am certain that it is.
How about the editors just read the damn stories on the front page?
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
Only polynesian word in the English language.
Do people around here have NOTHING better to do with their time but post messages on how a story is a dupe?!?! My GOD people, please tell me your lives are not this pathetic. Surely you have something productive to do. Maybe, just maybe the editor forgot that the story was posted.. or do you never forget anything you ever do??
Guys & gals, The article notes that it is a dupe, the editors know it is a dupe. get off it already. PX
"And the heathens with their ways of trickery and deceit shall not prevail over the will of the righteous"
the fact that Rob Malda was the one that posted the original message and even HE isn't listened to around here, let alone everyone else who's chomping at the bit for some recognition.
He gets a 1, tagged troll becuase he busted your ass? Do the editors know the definition of BIASED or NEOPTISM ? I thought not.
When I have a Season Pass on Tivo, it won't record a show if it has recorded it in the last 28 days. How can I set /. to do that?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity,
so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
-- Richard Stallman
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...